Natural rock or stone is a desired building material because of its beauty and durability. Unfortunately, natural rock and stone suffers from several disadvantages such as cost, weight, flexibility, and ease of installation. For example, the weight of natural rock or stone results in increased shipping and handling costs and also increased installation costs. Installation costs are increased, among other reasons, because of the need to build support structures capable of handling the heavy weight of natural rock or stone building materials. Additionally, care must be taken to avoid or minimize breakage that can occur with the rock or stone in transport. This results in increased shipping costs. Furthermore, certain applications require flexible building materials, which eliminates the use of natural rock or stone because of their rigidity.
Attempts to solve the disadvantages inherent in the use of natural rock or stone as a building material have primarily focused on the development and use of synthetic or man-made products to simulate the beauty of natural rock and stone. Unfortunately, such products cannot match the beauty of nature in texture, color and look, and often fail to have the durability of natural rock. Other attempts have focused on cutting or slicing natural rock or stone into layers, such as quarter-inch thick layers, using various processes, such as wet saws. These techniques still suffer from the disadvantages of high material and production cost, relatively heavy weight, and inflexibility.